No Surprise: Psychiatrist pushing “Depression” testing for 3-yr-olds connected to three drug companies

It’s easy to make jokes about “preschool depression”—students get it every time the alarm rings—but finding depression, “relapses,” “chronicity,” and “treatment resistance” in 3-year-olds is not funny.

Researchers used to believe that “young children were too cognitively and emotionally immature to experience depressive effects,” says Joan L. Luby, M.D., but now believe they can and do suffer from Major Depressive Disorder (MDD).

Martha Rosenberg
The Epoch Times
August 17, 2009

Try to access the Web site of the Archives of General Psychiatry, and you may have to abide an ad for the antidepressant Pristiq before you can enter. (JAMA and its Archives Journals “do not endorse the advertised product,” you’ll be assured.)

But look for a pharma affiliation for the author of the article “Preschool Depression,” Joan L. Luby, M.D., in the August issue, and you’ll be told no “financial disclosure” was reported. Not that “Dr. Luby has received grant/research support from Janssen, has given occasional talks sponsored by AstraZeneca, and has served as a consultant for Shire Pharmaceutical,” as a 2006 article in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry says.

Even though the pharmaceutical industry has 27 million Americans—10 percent of the population—on antidepressants, thanks to direct to consumer advertising, it is looking for depression in preschoolers. And guess what? It’s finding it!

Read entire article: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/21114/

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